Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather has lived up to his nickname by setting the highest price for a UK boxing pay-per-view ever – and promoter Eddie Hearn doesn’t quite know what to say.
Mayweather retired from the sport as a professional in 2017 with a record of 50 wins and zero losses. Since then, he’s been a regular on the exhibition circuit, facing men who have no right to be in the ring with them other than they can draw a crowd.
His list of opponents include MMA Stars and YouTubers like Logan Paul and Deji, and he’s making his first fighting trip to Britain on February 25 to stage his next bout at London’s O2 Arena.
The man in the other corner is Aaron Chalmers – a 1-0 boxer with an MMA past who also featured regularly on MTV’s Geordie Shore back in its heyday.
If fans fancy tuning in from home, they’ll have to fork out £32.26 to streaming website Zeus Network. In reaction to the news, some fans online claimed that it would do less than 10 buys.
Hearn was asked by Boxing Social what he thought of the price during a quick-fire media scrum, and the promoter was stopped in his tracks. After shaking his head in disappointment, he said ‘no’ quickly followed by ‘speechless.’
For reference, Tyson Fury’s last heavyweight title defence on BT Sport was priced at £26.95 – and that was widely criticised. Anthony Joshua’s latest outing against Oleksandr Usyk was £24.95 on Sky Sports. The standard for a British show – as represented by the most recent box office event in Chris Eubank Jr versus Liam Smith – is £19.95.
How well Mayweather’s event performs remains to be seen, but it won’t be helped by taking place a day before the Jake Paul versus Tommy Fury fight – also PPV but not yet priced.